Doubting God? Even the best did!(Review- C.S Lewis )

Doubting God? Even the best did!(Review- C.S Lewis A Grief Observed)

I’ve pictured myself as a man surrounded by books, living a calm life in a hill station where the sun was only a sporadic visitor. I cannot help but imagine myself like C.S. Lewis, with a huge belly and a half-moon Dumbledore spectacle, spending my life writing beloved novels, teaching literature to brimming scholars and occasionally trying out poetry.

This imaginary future won’t be possible without the credence that I can live my life all alone. The divine creator is the ultimate source of my existence and purpose. Like St. Paul’s words, God must be the source of strength to my weary bones, and of course books, a crutch.

When I was reading A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis wasn’t just the famous author of The Chronicles of Narnia but a broken man rambling over his wife’s loss. To clarify the context he was an academician and an apologetic, whose Christian books, especially Mere Christianity and The Screw Tape Letters,portray him as a strong believer of Christianity. But this wasn’t the case always.

A brief history

C.S Lewis’ life is an interesting story of odds. Lewis turned out to be a devout Atheist in college and shunned all religious schools thought. But on meeting J.R.R Tolkien, the well-known author of the iconic novel Lord of the Rings and a catholic, their superficial discourse about true myth revived Lewis’ religious faith, thereby becomes an academic guardian of the Christian faith through his intellectual books. (As a side note, intellectual faith will never work in Christianity. The apostles did not have Ivy League degrees but they certainly seem to have something that made them cross oceans to preach about).

Marriage Life

While Lewis had been a bachelor, almost throughout his life, his biographers point out some early life affair with his friend’s mother. At the ripe age of 58 he married Joy Davidman, an aficionado of Lewis, and after exchanging some letters they both fell in love. This happiest part of Lewis’ life didn’t last long as Joy Davidman died of cancer after 4 years.

Doubts crop up

As a writer Lewis grieved his wife’s unbearable loss through the anguished writing A Grief Observed.

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

Eventually, C.S Lewis turns to God but in certain passages seems to question God about this unexpected sudden loss. Even humans act the same at such dire states. I think of the biblical character Job’s perseverance in understanding the Lord he worships while his wife failed, unable to comprehend and bare the ugliness and the unfairness. She asked him to curse the Lord and die. Most of the non-believers seem to draw attention to the outstanding unfairness. They point fingers at wars, genocides, diseases, many unjust happenings and are quick enough to say ‘if there is really a God how can all these happen’,.

But I believe that as there is God, these things are happening. God, I suppose, is not some dotting grandfather who gives everything to everyone who obeys him. Instead, I assume him as the author of the entire Universe who has approved such unfairness in his universal story to bring it to order and make it much more interesting. This is not a dream but life. We do need a villain and pain. This is as real as it gets. Our own canary brain can only comprehend so much of the divine being.

I always thought we don’t have an inkling of the magnificence of this creator. Imagine, can an ant understand humans, their mind, their brain, their feelings? That is just out of scope for them to comprehend.

House of Cards

“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”

Well, he knocks the cards for all I guess. Some recognize him as a tough taskmaster, hence deny him and leave him. Some understand his wisdom and cling to him with all their heart, soul and mind. Sometimes, even fanatically, this is where religion isn’t much help. Religion is just a carapace while truth is deeper, and anyone who has really found God will understand how religion and the congregation of massive people under God’s name alone isn’t adequate to comprehend God. He is God. He can do anything he wants. All the God’s men, the protector of religion, seems to have become conscious that only religion needs crusades, missions, yatras but God doesn’t. God doesn’t need us, but we need him.

In the End

“We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand least.”“Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.” ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

I perceive that grief was given to glimpse the reality of this life and the frailty of it. When my dad died, I too began questioning my belief as the traditional sense of God bothered me. Later, when my quest became intense and slowly, but certainly, I deciphered that it’s vital to believe the author than the story itself. Can the mud ask the potter why it was made in such a way? That would be a joke. I’m glad for C.S Lewis has crossed the sea of doubt in the torrent and finally anchored in the eternal rock of ages.

You can buy this book here.

Share it with all your friends, and support this blog friends.

Kindly subscribe to our blog to receive all our Updates: